The globalized economy is a colossal Ponzi Scheme in which the vast majority survive on the bread crumbs falling off the table. The possibility of 7 billion people achieving a consumption-oriented lifestyle is zero, so the World Bank conveniently set the poverty line at $1.25/day to legalize global slavery. As long as someone else's children are doing the suffering, it's "all good". Post-2008, this illusion was extended merely by plundering all future generations.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Obama Is Mayor McJob

A Totally Bogus "Recovery"This entire four year "recovery" is one massive lie propagated by apologists for the status quo. Unfortunately, an economy does not consist of borrowing ludicrous amounts of money to buy millions of temporary part-time jobs, while legacy industrial capacity is shipped offshore. Yet somehow a mystical combination of the Dow levitating to a new high and corporate profits at unprecedented obscene levels, has convinced the Idiocracy that the economy is improving. Every other statistic, including jobs, is moving in the wrong direction. Today was another monthly jobs report. As usual, the headline number of ~162,000 new jobs, was totally meaningless. As ZH reports, fully 77% of the jobs created so far this year were part-time McJobs...

77 Fucking Percent !!!

That's a conversation ending statistic, as in:

"The economy seems to be getting better"

"Are you aware that 77% of the jobs created this year were part-time low paying McJobs?"

"Never mind..."

Here is the Real Jobs Story: The Labor Participation Rate (chart below) - This is the return on investment from $7 trillion of new debt (i.e. $100k per household) to buy 7 million mostly McJobs since 2007. That's a million dollars per low wage job thrown down the shit hole. As we found out with GWBush, the low quality jobs created during his term had a shelf life of about :15 minutes once the recession started. We have no reason to expect that the part-time jobs being created now will be any more durable.At this juncture, every new dollar of government debt goes from the government, straight to corporate profit, out via dividend, and into the offshore bank account. There is zero investment, no new (real) jobs and no derivative economic benefit. The "Keynesian Multiplier" is now negative, as this chart clearly shows:

Amazon is the New Walmart

What is even more mind boggling is that Obama did a photo-op at an Amazon warehouse this week touting 7,000 new warehouse jobs. The only problem is that these too are low paying sweatshop style jobs. Of course, Amazon is now taking over where Walmart left off, bankrupting small businesses. First off, Amazon has a negative cost of capital - thanks to the fact that Wall Street overlooked 8 years of losses, fully expecting a monopoly to emerge out the other end. Meanwhile, Amazon also doesn't pay sales tax in most states, which is another huge advantage. The linked article estimates that the 7,000 "Obama jobs" that Amazon is creating will result in roughly 22,000 small business jobs being lost. And it's a sad day indeed when the Commander-in-Chief has to stoop to talking up fucking warehouse jobs. No offense to people who work in warehouses - I worked in one years ago in Canada too, but suffice to say, I never expected the Prime Minister to show up touting economic achievement. Once upon a time, Boeing, Caterpillar, Cummins, IBM, Motorola etc. were prime examples of America's industrial prowess in aerospace, heavy equipment, durable goods and technology. Now, the marker of progress has been whittled down to $11/hour McJobs in Amazon warehouses packaging up cheap dildos made in China. You can't make this shit up.

Still, the Idiocracy just keeps munching away contentedly on that shit sandwich...